It can be distinguished from other mahseer by the prominent hump originating above the pre-opercle, a distinctive kink in the pre-opercule, a terminal mouth position, and its bright orange caudal fin.

[6] These and other factors including loss of riparian cover, industrial and urban pollutions, irrigation and abstraction, plus climatic changes in monsoon weather patterns led to a heavy crash in hump-backed mahseer populations around 2004.

Despite this endangered status, the general lack of a formal scientific name had previously hampered efforts to protect the species.

However, a 2018 study found that the orange-finned mahseer was in fact conspecific with Tor remadevii, a little-known species identified in 2007 based on 19 individuals [7] sampled from the Pambar River in 2004.

[8] This has allowed the species as known from historic records across the whole river basin to finally gain a scientific name and an updated Red Listing.